This wikiHow teaches you what to add to your Facebook profile to make it look authentic when you must stay anonymous. As long as you don’t intend to harass or deceive anyone, you can craft a profile that that enables you to keep track of events, get support, share recipes, and play games without having to divulge your true identity.

Steps

1

Choose a name that sounds real. When coming up with a name, put yourself into the shoes of someone who’s choosing a name for their baby. Imagine a first and last name that sound great together. Unique, but not too out there!

Be careful with using names from popular movies or television, as they might sound too obvious (e.g. “Brad Pitt” or “Jennifer Lopez”). Instead, choose a first name from one star and a last name from another, like Brad Lopez or Jennifer Pitt!

2

Upload a profile photo. If you leave the profile photo blank, nobody will believe the account is real. The trouble is, stealing other peoples’ photos is illegal—if the person in the photo (or the photographer) finds out that you’re using their photo without permission, you could face legal trouble.[2] Try these ideas instead:

Take a selfie, but use enough filters to make yourself look unrecognizable.

Fill out your profile. People may look at your profile to try to figure out who you are. When choosing a hometown, current location, employer, and education, the details should be realistic.

Choose a hometown and/or current city that you know well and can talk about. This is especially important if you intent to join a Facebook group for a particular region.

Make sure your age works with your job and education! If your profile says you’re 18, don’t say you have a law degree from Yale and work for the FBI.

If you’re just signing up to play games or follow news, don’t worry about filling out your profile, liking pages, or adding friends. As long as your name and photo look real, you’re good to go!

4

Post things on your timeline. If you’ll be interacting with other people, expect them to check your timeline for hints on kind of things you post, how long you’ve been posting them, and whether anyone else interacts with you.

If your profile is brand new but you want people to know you’re not new to Facebook, post something like “I’m back on Facebook” or “Time to start fresh.”

Share YouTube videos, popular memes, and news articles. Add a comment to anything you share, even if it’s goofy. For example, “This video cracked me up,” or “I can’t believe this really happened!”

5

Click Like on pages that interest you. You’ll find this button at the top of pages for products, media personalities, celebrities, restaurants, and virtually anything else. People who view your profile will see a list of all of your “likes” and use that information to get a sense of who you are.[3]

Add new friends. Without a few friends to start with, potential new friends and groups may think you look suspicious.

Find new friends by visiting Facebook pages for movies, celebrities, or political ideas. When you find someone you want to add, click their name, and then click Add Friend.

People may not accept your request without an introduction. Send them a message first, saying something like “I really relate to what you said on the wikiHow page, can we be Facebook friends?”

If you feel comfortable, ask a few of your real-life friends to add your fake profile.

7

Interact with others on public pages. Now that you’ve created a realistic Facebook profile and added friends, you’re ready to start using Facebook as your new persona! When you click Like on posts from celebrities or news sources, your friends will see the activity in their feeds and know that you’re a real person. They’ll also see when you post on those pages, so be sure to jump into some interesting conversations on your favorite show or new source’s page.

Community Q&A

Will they need an email and if so, if you use yours, how do you log in as another person?

wikiHow Contributor

You'll need to use a different email address to create a second account. You can use a free email site like Gmail or Hotmail to create a new email address, and then visit Facebook's page to sign up with your new email.

They seem to have blocked my IP address. I have tried several times but they block it very quickly. Can I get around this?

wikiHow Contributor

You could benefit from Anonymox, a free IP masker. The problem is that IP masking is used so often by bad people, like criminals, spammers and terrorists, so it does feel kind of risky. On the other hand, data farmers like Facebook and Google have no right to demand you give them your real info in return for their services and it isn't illegal. Just be sure you don't use IP masking and your fake account for anything naughty and you needn't worry about it. With IP masking, it may not be 100% effective and you may also find that Facebook demands an adequate profile photo for facial recognition purposes (tracking you, authenticating you, etc).